Lines Written Near the Lawrence Ranch, Taos, New Mexico

There is something wild in the night wind.
It roams sagebrush and pinon, plunges
through flowering arroyos, ahead of lightning
strikes over the Sangre de Cristos Mountains.

Maybe somewhere Trickster Coyote is peering into
Jackrabbit’s grassy nest, telling him to be strong,
the pain of being devoured won’t last longer than he
can stand: Then you will take on coyote muscle,
coyote blood, and see with coyote eyes, he says.
If it seems cruel, it is at least the truth.

Lawrence could have told this love story:
the solstice moon sacrificed,
the black-on-black pottery of the stars holding
its light, the mythic Avanyu snaking across the desert
toward the source of all waters, and the two of us
finding the trail we thought we’d lost.

For a week we imagine the small adobe—
five miles out a gravel road on a mountain— is ours.
Every breeze rifling our pages under the ponderosa pine
reminds us that this land has no need for words.

Like fire spreading across the high plains,
we try to write what burns down old growth,
makes black soil for green stalks to sprout.
Is this the phoenix moment he offers us?
Notebooks fill up with dangerous journeys,
untamable horses, and the trembling balance we risk.

If our Penitente deathcarts overflow with more corpses
from the past than we can bear, perhaps the grievance
of growing old alone will one day be ours.
That could be the worst that awaits us.

And then there you are, Lorenzo, like some masked
cacique holding out the ceremonial blade
dripping with your own heart’s blood.